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Stuff my dog says; on second thought I'll just build a race car
- Thread starter NashGTI
- Start date
Legitimate issues now, woke up this morning and my laptop won't turn on. Says a boot file is missing and I have no recovery stuff. And that was the only place I kept any pictures.
There should be a recovery or repair tool/disc available on Ebay to get things going again. It's a matter of finding a good recommendation from someone. All is not lost.
Yeah, just gotta find the recovery thumb drive and have it do it's thing. It's just stuff that isn't much fun and I feel like complaining.
Complaining often makes me feel better too, so have at it.
Am I doing pictures right?
A few basics I learned from the wife (she did this photog stuff for a living for over 30 yrs).
1st tip. Backgrounds should be pleasing without distracting.
The top pic has the car headlights parked just over the seat. The other headlight interferes with the front of the bike. Both are distracting.
The second pic is overpowered by the green hood as well as the ghost car hovering in the background. Huge distraction.
There's an extremely fine line between background items as artistic expression.... and just plain clutter.
2nd tip. Accentuate the good features, but don't make them stand out. From your albums....
This one accentuates that beautiful seat and boat tail.
This one makes your butt look fat...
You have some fantastic shots in your album. Let them be your guide.
1st tip. Backgrounds should be pleasing without distracting.
The top pic has the car headlights parked just over the seat. The other headlight interferes with the front of the bike. Both are distracting.
The second pic is overpowered by the green hood as well as the ghost car hovering in the background. Huge distraction.
There's an extremely fine line between background items as artistic expression.... and just plain clutter.
2nd tip. Accentuate the good features, but don't make them stand out. From your albums....
This one accentuates that beautiful seat and boat tail.
This one makes your butt look fat...
You have some fantastic shots in your album. Let them be your guide.
haha, I specifically put that up because they weren't well done pictures.
Finally took pictures of where that back bar was put in last weekend. Plus just sort of sat the fuel cell up there with it.
The got to work doing to reinforcements that come down to that back bar. Also with fuel cell sitting there for reference.
At this point, with the chassis on the stands the top of the roll hoop was too high to really weld so I had to lower the chassis. And since I was lowering the chassis I figured why not block it at ride height. That horse is nearly the same height that the engine will be sitting in the chassis, and the front edge of the horse is sat about where the front of the engine will be. Not only that but the creeper chair is damn near where the driver's seat will be oddly.
Jeff there with me remarked how low everything looked but that's 4 inches and those rails should be the lowest point on the vehicle. It's not comfortable street car height but then this still isn't a street car, and low means low center of gravity which means better handling. Following getting those bars welded in we cut some strips on the plasma table and began to put the cap pieces on that back bar just like I've done on the main chassis rails.
The last picture was where I left off for the day. I've got the strips cut to go the rest of the way 'round, but it'd been 8 hours by that point and would've had to clean more metal before I could weld them on. The chassis is still actually relatively easy lift at this point, I'd say it's around 100 pounds now, maybe a little under. The balance point is just aft of the midpoint of the flat bottom parts of the chassis. That doesn't really mean anything to this point, but seemed interesting enough to include here.
The got to work doing to reinforcements that come down to that back bar. Also with fuel cell sitting there for reference.
At this point, with the chassis on the stands the top of the roll hoop was too high to really weld so I had to lower the chassis. And since I was lowering the chassis I figured why not block it at ride height. That horse is nearly the same height that the engine will be sitting in the chassis, and the front edge of the horse is sat about where the front of the engine will be. Not only that but the creeper chair is damn near where the driver's seat will be oddly.
Jeff there with me remarked how low everything looked but that's 4 inches and those rails should be the lowest point on the vehicle. It's not comfortable street car height but then this still isn't a street car, and low means low center of gravity which means better handling. Following getting those bars welded in we cut some strips on the plasma table and began to put the cap pieces on that back bar just like I've done on the main chassis rails.
The last picture was where I left off for the day. I've got the strips cut to go the rest of the way 'round, but it'd been 8 hours by that point and would've had to clean more metal before I could weld them on. The chassis is still actually relatively easy lift at this point, I'd say it's around 100 pounds now, maybe a little under. The balance point is just aft of the midpoint of the flat bottom parts of the chassis. That doesn't really mean anything to this point, but seemed interesting enough to include here.
Attachments
VERY pretty work!
NashGTI, well done! These are the first photos showing clearly where you are headed and it's looking shapely rather than box like. I cannot believe it's so light . You now have a great focal point for the finish line...
. You now have a great focal point for the finish line...
NashGTI, well done! These are the first photos showing clearly where you are headed and it's looking shapely rather than box like. I cannot believe it's so light
Pictures versus reality are really funny. Things don't always represent themselves well in pictures, but sometimes they do. The flip side of that really is that I don't really expect this car to be aesthetically pleasing. My XS I think is a great example of things where the shape of things doesn't come through in pictures, you can only see things in two dimensions and it makes things look taller and slab sided. I always say to myself that it just doesn't photograph well but clearly I'm biased and I love the look of it.
The proportions of this car are going to look weird. Lemme bring this ugly MSPaint drawing back into focus for a minute. Actually scrap that, let me update it slightly with the roll hoop.and then bring it in here.
The thing is going to be super super long and low, but narrow. Not just the body of the car but the track width in general. The flip side being the seating position will be rather upright, not the super reclined seating position people think of when they think low slung race cars. Plus the seating position is waaay back. Then too, the tires are going to be quite small in relation to the size of the car. In any event it'll probably be awkward looking.
That being said, when the frame was sitting there four inches off the ground with the tires sitting next to it I couldn't help but think it was looking....
Good? Less goofy than I was expecting? I honestly don't know how to term the feeling but it was positive. Anyway, I put the two videos I took together and got it uploaded to Youtube last night so this is here but nothing that you haven't seen in pictures.
I like it....
I was thinking today about a comment one of the guys in the front part of the building I'm building the car in made the other day and figured I'd share it. Messing with the fuel cell the guy commented "Well that's at least big enough to get you to the next gas station." Thing is though, the fuel cell says it holds 12 gallons. So assume the car will average 5 miles per gallon during track time, and for simplicity's sake we can assume an average speed of 60mph. That gets you near an hour of track time per tank which is plenty, probably more than you want at a time really.
That's all simple math really, it of course remains to be seen at what rate this will actually use fuel of course. Period publications though noted that the Tornado engine was unusually fuel efficient even driving what were at the time full size trucks though. Even if you assume what feels like the worst and say 2.5mpg that'll get a half hour on track at a time which given my otherwise total lack of aggressive driving is probably all my body will want.
The other question in my mind is, driven NOT on a track what kind of average fuel consumption would this vehicle hit? Again at the time they suggested 16 or 17 mpg was a possibility when using a fairly large truck, so what would a super lightweight vehicle with nearly no frontal area to speak of be able to achieve? You would almost certainly be able to get a couple hours of drive time between fill ups, maybe three hours.
None of this matters of course. It's just something that may be of interest, or a question others have had.
That's all simple math really, it of course remains to be seen at what rate this will actually use fuel of course. Period publications though noted that the Tornado engine was unusually fuel efficient even driving what were at the time full size trucks though. Even if you assume what feels like the worst and say 2.5mpg that'll get a half hour on track at a time which given my otherwise total lack of aggressive driving is probably all my body will want.
The other question in my mind is, driven NOT on a track what kind of average fuel consumption would this vehicle hit? Again at the time they suggested 16 or 17 mpg was a possibility when using a fairly large truck, so what would a super lightweight vehicle with nearly no frontal area to speak of be able to achieve? You would almost certainly be able to get a couple hours of drive time between fill ups, maybe three hours.
None of this matters of course. It's just something that may be of interest, or a question others have had.
Vacation Pictures
If you didn't realize it by now, my son Jordan and I went to Pickett State Park in Tennessee. It's in the upper Cumberland Plateau area and there is a great big national recreation area right next two that State Park, plus multiple other state parks bordering Pickett, and a state recreation area that borders Pickett. That is to say there are tens of thousands of wooded hilly and/or mountainous terrain all right there most of it is restricted development stuff so it's mostly wild. When we got there those beware of the bears fliers are all over the park, every single door or notice area, all the trash cans, all the picnic benches, everywhere. Jordan asked right away if bears were actually going to be a problem where we threw up the tent. I told him that I didn't expect them to be as we were right next to the bath house in the middle of the campground but even further than that there were going to be several stupider people there making themselves better targets than we would be. The first night there was uneventful apart from hearing a coyote just outside the campground area. There were noisy kids and all and you could hear bats overhead, but nothing much and it was a relaxing night apart from us forgetting to bring pillows.
Friday the following day out hiking we spotted some bear scat way out on a ridge miles away from the campground. Jordan seemed spooked by it, but it was at least a couple days old and it didn't seem to be important to me apart from confirmation of bear in the state park area and validating the fliers......which I believed in the first place given the location.
Friday night at I was sort of preparing for the worst. I'm still not expecting trouble with the locals, our food was never in the tent, our trash is put away in the appropriate bins, everything is put up in the back of my SUV which is a few dozen feet from the tent. The weather was my concern as we were expecting a storm front to go through in the night. At near 1 in the morning I was woken by a series of small explosions at the site beside ours. Sitting up I unzipped the window and looked over to see embers from their fire ring strewn all about the campsite beside ours. No idea what it was, 4 or 5 fairly loud bangs in rapid succession. I'm thinking they must've left something too close to the fire and it eventually blew?
Then the rains and wind came, wind actually blowing the rain up under the rain fly of the tent through the mess ceiling and getting the inside of the tent wet. There wasn't lightning or thunder, but the wind blew everything around pretty well and stuff got wet. That was roughly thirty minutes after the bangs. Saturday went by, and we were at the lake fishing till 7pm where I started getting worried about the temperature. When we left home the projected low was 53, leaving the lake at just after dark it was already 50 and the sky was completely cloudless. Stopping at the park office to check the forecast the expected low was down to 46 but my guess at the time was it was getting much colder and we didn't have the right clothes or sleeping bags for it. We went to the tent had dinner made a fire then turned in just after 10. It was getting cold. This is when things got good.
At just before midnight I was jerked awake by a woman just on the other side of the bathhouse screaming. Then just a ton of general commotion, people moving about, tents being unzipped, excited voices going too quickly to make out at a distance and all talking at once. There were kids crying under all the din. A few minutes after the scream things calmed enough I could make out the woman saying she had heard a noise outside her tent and opened the fly to inspect it finding a large (her words not my impression) bear nosing the tent her kids were sleeping in. She said it ran off into the woods when she screamed. Given this confirmation of a bear in the area that is perfectly willing to come right up to peoples tents and having seen several people stupid enough to just have coolers and food literally sitting close enough to the tents as to be touching them I went to the truck and got the rifle to take into the tent with Jordan and I. There was still zero expectation that we would have trouble as there was no smell of food near us, but I was thinking that if the bear was indeed trying to get into those kids' tent they must have food in there and the bear knows it so things could get bad for them and I was far nearer by than the rangers who would've been off site asleep.
Once everything had calmed down I went back into the tent and back into the sleeping bag because it was downright cold out now without even a moderate jacket. Just a handful of minutes after laying back down I heard two men down the hill from us in the campground yelling and urging the bear to leave on it's own volition. Nobody sounded panicked, no reason to believe anything problematic was happening, I got out of the tent again and stayed out for several minutes to see if I could see anything but couldn't Seeing nothing and with the commotion down there having died down I went back to bed. This time I stayed dressed because the bear has made itself issue twice in thirty minutes and again I'm thinking it's not getting any better tonight.
An hour later I woke up again to what sounded like leaves rustling and the sort of low grumbly sound of a black bear so I got up again to have a look around. I heard no more noise, saw no animals, everything seemed quiet so at that point I was just thinking it was my mind playing tricks on me. I had heard Jordan rustling around in his sleeping bag and thought it was steps, the grumbly growly noise was just Jordan snoring. Back to bed I went, really cold now. One more time, now at 3 according to my phone, I was woken up again this time up the hill from us by rattling pots and pans. No doubt the bear having found more interesting smells. Heard no human interaction this time, I once again exited the tent but the noises were over a rise and I couldn't see anything. I did make a mental note that all the bug noises and bat chirping was absent this time. It was dead quiet when I got out of the tent. I'll point out that at no time after bringing the rifle into the tent did I ever actually touch it again, it just sat there in case it was needed. After that first go around at midnight no one ever seemed panicked or worried by the presence of the bear so I wasn't either. Every time I got out of the tent I did have my pistol on one hip and a hunting knife on the opposite, but that's simply standard operating procedure for me whenever I'm in anything resembling wilderness. The holster and knife were still on the belt on the pants it had on that day so when I got dressed to leave the tent they were simply already there. About seven just after sun up I woke up to more pots and pans clanging up the hill as well as what sounded like boxes and tupperware containers being thrown around. I'm assuming the stuff being cleaned up after being ransacked earlier that night. Knowing that all my chances for sleep were gone now I got up and looked at the thermometer with the truck......36 degrees.
Talking to a gentleman then who had walked up the hill to the bathroom I learned that what I heard at one thirty likely was the bear walking past the tent, the man said it was harassing him at twelve thirty and again at one thirty. He also said the bear was pressing on the sides of their pop up tent camper trying to get in. They had used a slow cooker in the camper all day Saturday cooking a chicken dish. One of those times it tore into one of the other sites trash down there too apparently. The man lamented the decision to use the slow cooker and said the only option he saw moving forward was to leave the area despite having paid for another night. There was no way to clear the smell of the cooking food and he knew the next night would bring more of the same. He did volunteer that despite the bad decision making, they understood it was bad decision making and not the bears fault. I never heard more from the group where the woman screamed. That was a large group, possibly a church group in my estimation, occupying several sites with probably 8 to 10 tents set up in close proximity. All the kids noisy and running around were annoying and disturbing of the otherwise pleasant and serene weekend. The take away for me, and I hope my son too, it was a great few days. Every trail we went on had fantastic views, we met and had conversations out on the trails with a small number of pleasant people, nature and being out in nature is great. The only problems apart from the temperature dipping 17 degrees below the projections were people in the campground just assuming that the rules and what I would think of as common sense didn't apply to them.
Friday the following day out hiking we spotted some bear scat way out on a ridge miles away from the campground. Jordan seemed spooked by it, but it was at least a couple days old and it didn't seem to be important to me apart from confirmation of bear in the state park area and validating the fliers......which I believed in the first place given the location.
Friday night at I was sort of preparing for the worst. I'm still not expecting trouble with the locals, our food was never in the tent, our trash is put away in the appropriate bins, everything is put up in the back of my SUV which is a few dozen feet from the tent. The weather was my concern as we were expecting a storm front to go through in the night. At near 1 in the morning I was woken by a series of small explosions at the site beside ours. Sitting up I unzipped the window and looked over to see embers from their fire ring strewn all about the campsite beside ours. No idea what it was, 4 or 5 fairly loud bangs in rapid succession. I'm thinking they must've left something too close to the fire and it eventually blew?
Then the rains and wind came, wind actually blowing the rain up under the rain fly of the tent through the mess ceiling and getting the inside of the tent wet. There wasn't lightning or thunder, but the wind blew everything around pretty well and stuff got wet. That was roughly thirty minutes after the bangs. Saturday went by, and we were at the lake fishing till 7pm where I started getting worried about the temperature. When we left home the projected low was 53, leaving the lake at just after dark it was already 50 and the sky was completely cloudless. Stopping at the park office to check the forecast the expected low was down to 46 but my guess at the time was it was getting much colder and we didn't have the right clothes or sleeping bags for it. We went to the tent had dinner made a fire then turned in just after 10. It was getting cold. This is when things got good.
At just before midnight I was jerked awake by a woman just on the other side of the bathhouse screaming. Then just a ton of general commotion, people moving about, tents being unzipped, excited voices going too quickly to make out at a distance and all talking at once. There were kids crying under all the din. A few minutes after the scream things calmed enough I could make out the woman saying she had heard a noise outside her tent and opened the fly to inspect it finding a large (her words not my impression) bear nosing the tent her kids were sleeping in. She said it ran off into the woods when she screamed. Given this confirmation of a bear in the area that is perfectly willing to come right up to peoples tents and having seen several people stupid enough to just have coolers and food literally sitting close enough to the tents as to be touching them I went to the truck and got the rifle to take into the tent with Jordan and I. There was still zero expectation that we would have trouble as there was no smell of food near us, but I was thinking that if the bear was indeed trying to get into those kids' tent they must have food in there and the bear knows it so things could get bad for them and I was far nearer by than the rangers who would've been off site asleep.
Once everything had calmed down I went back into the tent and back into the sleeping bag because it was downright cold out now without even a moderate jacket. Just a handful of minutes after laying back down I heard two men down the hill from us in the campground yelling and urging the bear to leave on it's own volition. Nobody sounded panicked, no reason to believe anything problematic was happening, I got out of the tent again and stayed out for several minutes to see if I could see anything but couldn't Seeing nothing and with the commotion down there having died down I went back to bed. This time I stayed dressed because the bear has made itself issue twice in thirty minutes and again I'm thinking it's not getting any better tonight.
An hour later I woke up again to what sounded like leaves rustling and the sort of low grumbly sound of a black bear so I got up again to have a look around. I heard no more noise, saw no animals, everything seemed quiet so at that point I was just thinking it was my mind playing tricks on me. I had heard Jordan rustling around in his sleeping bag and thought it was steps, the grumbly growly noise was just Jordan snoring. Back to bed I went, really cold now. One more time, now at 3 according to my phone, I was woken up again this time up the hill from us by rattling pots and pans. No doubt the bear having found more interesting smells. Heard no human interaction this time, I once again exited the tent but the noises were over a rise and I couldn't see anything. I did make a mental note that all the bug noises and bat chirping was absent this time. It was dead quiet when I got out of the tent. I'll point out that at no time after bringing the rifle into the tent did I ever actually touch it again, it just sat there in case it was needed. After that first go around at midnight no one ever seemed panicked or worried by the presence of the bear so I wasn't either. Every time I got out of the tent I did have my pistol on one hip and a hunting knife on the opposite, but that's simply standard operating procedure for me whenever I'm in anything resembling wilderness. The holster and knife were still on the belt on the pants it had on that day so when I got dressed to leave the tent they were simply already there. About seven just after sun up I woke up to more pots and pans clanging up the hill as well as what sounded like boxes and tupperware containers being thrown around. I'm assuming the stuff being cleaned up after being ransacked earlier that night. Knowing that all my chances for sleep were gone now I got up and looked at the thermometer with the truck......36 degrees.
Talking to a gentleman then who had walked up the hill to the bathroom I learned that what I heard at one thirty likely was the bear walking past the tent, the man said it was harassing him at twelve thirty and again at one thirty. He also said the bear was pressing on the sides of their pop up tent camper trying to get in. They had used a slow cooker in the camper all day Saturday cooking a chicken dish. One of those times it tore into one of the other sites trash down there too apparently. The man lamented the decision to use the slow cooker and said the only option he saw moving forward was to leave the area despite having paid for another night. There was no way to clear the smell of the cooking food and he knew the next night would bring more of the same. He did volunteer that despite the bad decision making, they understood it was bad decision making and not the bears fault. I never heard more from the group where the woman screamed. That was a large group, possibly a church group in my estimation, occupying several sites with probably 8 to 10 tents set up in close proximity. All the kids noisy and running around were annoying and disturbing of the otherwise pleasant and serene weekend. The take away for me, and I hope my son too, it was a great few days. Every trail we went on had fantastic views, we met and had conversations out on the trails with a small number of pleasant people, nature and being out in nature is great. The only problems apart from the temperature dipping 17 degrees below the projections were people in the campground just assuming that the rules and what I would think of as common sense didn't apply to them.
Attachments
Great expedition... I must remember this, 18' to the first overhanging branch.
I must remember this, 18' to the first overhanging branch.
Reminds me of a weekend camping trip I took with first wife and some friends in the Adirondacks in New York State.
We were staying at a State campground and staying in tents. We decided to spend some time on the lake with the canoes. On the way back to our tents some kid is chattering about a bear in one of the camp sites.
Turned out it was our site and the bear got a wiff of our friends steaks thawing out in their Coleman cooler. Bear decided to take it with him and started rolling it along through the woods till some guys made enough noise and bear decided to find a quieter place and left the cooler. It was one of those good steel coolers and other than a few scratches was undamaged. That couple decided to in their car as the cooler had leaked a little steak juice in their tent!
We were staying at a State campground and staying in tents. We decided to spend some time on the lake with the canoes. On the way back to our tents some kid is chattering about a bear in one of the camp sites.
Turned out it was our site and the bear got a wiff of our friends steaks thawing out in their Coleman cooler. Bear decided to take it with him and started rolling it along through the woods till some guys made enough noise and bear decided to find a quieter place and left the cooler. It was one of those good steel coolers and other than a few scratches was undamaged. That couple decided to in their car as the cooler had leaked a little steak juice in their tent!
Finished capping the back hoop today. Nothing earth shattering there.
That took up the morning then I started bending pipe for the other two chassis hoops, the dash and toe bars. Unfortunately things literally went sideways there and I didn't get either bar bent straight. So both pieces had to be cut in the middle, sleeved and welded back straight. That took up a good bit of time and I ended up not getting as much done as I was hoping.
You'll have to trust me that those are separate pieces as they pretty much look the same. You can see the spot in the middle of the cross piece in both bars where they've been cut and welded back together. I really thought I was going to get both hoops done and welded to the rest of the chassis today but ended up just getting the dash bar on.
Buddy there says "That looks high Mike" which it is, but it has to clear the engine and the engine is really tall. Consequence being everything is taller than you think it really should be, the seating position will be taller than you'd think too for the same reason. It's said with cars of this era (era that this is based off at least) that you didn't sit in the car you sat on it, and that's really quite true and rather the opposite of what people expect for the last fifty years or so.
That took up the morning then I started bending pipe for the other two chassis hoops, the dash and toe bars. Unfortunately things literally went sideways there and I didn't get either bar bent straight. So both pieces had to be cut in the middle, sleeved and welded back straight. That took up a good bit of time and I ended up not getting as much done as I was hoping.
You'll have to trust me that those are separate pieces as they pretty much look the same. You can see the spot in the middle of the cross piece in both bars where they've been cut and welded back together. I really thought I was going to get both hoops done and welded to the rest of the chassis today but ended up just getting the dash bar on.
Buddy there says "That looks high Mike" which it is, but it has to clear the engine and the engine is really tall. Consequence being everything is taller than you think it really should be, the seating position will be taller than you'd think too for the same reason. It's said with cars of this era (era that this is based off at least) that you didn't sit in the car you sat on it, and that's really quite true and rather the opposite of what people expect for the last fifty years or so.
I just wonder, could this have been you some time ago?
Yea, probably..
Yea, probably..
